By its silence, New Anti-capitalist Party supports Odessa massacre

By
Anthony Torres
10 May 2014

The silence of the NPA on the fascist massacre perpetrated in Odessa on May 2 is devastating proof of the reactionary character of this middle-class organisation. Having applauded the fascist putsch by which the NATO powers installed a pro-imperialist puppet regime in Kiev, the NPA now supports this regime, keeping silent on an atrocity that has shocked millions around the world.

Pro-Kiev fascist forces who arrived to crush protestors in Odessa set fire to the trade union building where pro-Russian activists had taken refuge, leaving at least 42 dead and 170 injured. The NPA is silent on this atrocity because it supports the Kiev regime, including its massacre of protestors.

What the NPA has written on Ukraine consists of pro-imperialist propaganda, hiding the role of the fascists while lining up with the imperialist powers’ media campaign to justify military escalation against Russia over Ukraine.

The NPA thus criticizes the meeting in Geneva between Russia, Ukraine, the European Union and the United States, which according to the NPA was not sufficiently firm with Russia. Though the meeting resulted in a new military offensive by Kiev, supported by the NATO imperialists, the NPA complained that Russian president Vladimir Putin ended up the winner: “We can reckon that the Geneva meeting is rather an immediate victory for Putin, with the diplomatic silence on the Crimea and the progression of opinion for Moscow’s policy in one form or another which advocates the ‘federalisation’ of the Ukraine.”

The concocted criticism by the NPA of the Geneva accord’s “silence on Crimea” grossly falsifies the development of the crisis. The tragic events in Ukraine are the work of Washington and the EU. They organized the overthrow of the pro-Russian government of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych with the aid of fascists in February, after Yanukovych turned down an association agreement with the EU and moved towards a customs union with Russia.

In order to justify its collaboration with the Ukrainian fascists during the demonstrations on the Maidan, the NPA and its Pabloite co-thinkers in the Ukraine and Russia praised these protests as “democratic”, all the while admitting that the working class was absent from the demonstrations and that the driving force of the movement was the Ukrainian far right.

The new regime in place in the Ukraine has integrated fascist militias into the state apparatus and includes six ministers from the fascist right. The pro-EU government signed an agreement with the International Monetary Fund imposing austerity on the working class, while preparing to remove the status of Russian as an official language and repressing Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine.

The Pabloites deny that the protestors in Maidan Place were organized with the aid of Washington. Instead, they say that reforms to the Ukrainian presidential constitution should be prepared, so as to “put an end to all the talk of supposed ‘anti-Russia’ or ‘fascist putsches’.”

The fascist massacre of pro-Russian protestors in Odessa demonstrates the lying character of the NPA’s attempts to deny the anti-Russian character of the Kiev regime.

This denial of reality is particularly flagrant, because the NPA itself recognised the central role played by the ultra-nationalists in the February coup in Kiev. (See: France’s New Anti-capitalist Party backs fascist-led putsch in Ukraine)

The NPA even tries to formulate strategies for the imperialists and their Ukrainian puppets to crush the pro-Russian protests, stabilize the Kiev regime, and deepen the offensive against Russia. The pseudo-left party explains that “the only response possible to the separatist risks is today the reinforcement of popular trust in a democratic Ukraine and anxious to listen to all of its population.”

By proposing to “reinforce” the political support for the Kiev regime, which it presents in an Orwellian manner as being “anxious to listen” to a population it is massacring, the NPA reveals the reason for its silence on the atrocity in Odessa. Functioning as an instrument of imperialism, the NPA is ready to work with the most reactionary forces against the working class and to cover up the worst fascist crimes.

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